Pics from British Columbia, Canada

[Allan Carr]

My wife and I went there two years ago and had a great time. The size of the sea life is amazing - metre high plumose anenomes! We were there in June and as well as Quadra Island, we did a rather eerie dive in Howe Sound around the corner from Vancouver. This was the time of the spring plankton bloom and viz for the first ten metres was absolutely zero. Beneath that, we had twenty five metre viz but absolutely pitch black like a night dive. What made it even more interesting was that it was a wall dive - 30 metres down and another 250 metres underneath us. Not a place to get your bouyancy wrong!

[John Gulliver]

Originally Posted by Lou

John


We took our own ponies. Mike laughed at us - as an "old school" diver he thought we were talking alot of rubbish about AAS, but they still fitted well within our baggage allowance. We had to show they were empty at Heathorw, before we even checked in, but other than that it was little bother.

Agree about the daft tanks though. Still got 40min dives on average, and over an hour on the octopus dive.

Lou

I did plan to take my pony but just didn't have room for it. My max. depth on the ferry wreck dive was only 12 m, so I could have stayed down all day. Apart from that, my dives were between 30 and 43 minutes long. With a bigger tank, I could easily have stayed down another 10-15 minutes on most of the dives before the tidal current forced me to ascend

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Lou

Adrian


We found that you wouldn't get the benefit of twins (unless you are a very heavy breather) as most dives were limted by slack anyway. When the Pacific Ocean decides it want to go through the 1/2 mile wide channel at Campbell River you can't really hang around and argue

Lou

Now that sounds like a fun drift. Thanks for the info Lou. Not so much a heavy breather (well a bit ), but an alternative method for AAS.

Adrian

[Lawrence Debono]

John, when I immigrated to Canada from Europe, I went bananas with the 72's and 80's CUFT. I had no Idea what their real volume was. Until I started working and understanding things out. Very important that if you use steel over here it doesn't mean that 72 or 80 cuft is gospel. That is if the tank is pumped to a certain higher pressure which the station isn't going to do more than likely. Yes, it is very deceiving. I always asked why in N America very few use large volume and "good" pressure tanks.

Ponies are handy to have and no one rents them out. This must have p155ed you off John! But you could find a nice 4L aluminum Catalina for very little over here. They are very easy to drag back to Europe. A lot of outfits don't use din either. That's why I never rent gear. Think about that too.

Another thing, if some one wants to have full advantage, ask for the PST 232 bars / 3400PSI galvanized tanks. The Yanks were given the green light to bring these monsters in this Country. They are awesome, loads of volume and pressure. You can get them as big as 16L with 232bars, thank God for that. If you're booking ahead make sure you talk in advance to the dive operation about volumes and pressure. You want a safety margin as well as decent bottom time. The other thing to look for here are the gauges - mostly Imperial measurements.

Other than those glitches, there is great diving here in Canada.


Lawrence D

[Norseman]

Haven't been active here lately due to lack of dives done and kind of a vacuum.

Those pics are very very nice, John! What's the successrate? I would have thought the standard uw-photographer rate would make your total somewhere in the area of 2-300 pictures!

Canadia. Niiiice.

Kyrre

[John Gulliver]

Bugger you for asking that Kyrre ! Your guess as to the number of photos i took is pretty close. Of course some of the shots were more or less duplicates and others bracketed shots (same shot with a different f number or shutter speed) but even allowing for those, my success rate is still not very high, say 10 frames per roll, the failures being due to such factors as over-eagerness (not waiting for my strobes to recharge), poor composition (cutting off the tail end of fishes etc), poor focus (inability to get close enough to macro subjects because the frame got in the way), back-scatter due to myself or or other divers stirring up sediment etc etc. I like to think I'm gradually getting better, though.
PS Get in the water!

[Norseman]

Nevertheless I think you've done a great job there!

Back in the water? Slight cold... might get in the water here at work in order to pick up parts from a life raft tested on the lake without attaching stuff with lanyard...
Going in the pool with Frid for the first time this evening. Hopefully we'll get our first underwater experience together. Whoohoo.

Sold the Discovery btw. Drove through Sweden to Oslo with it... Lots of nice roads, John

Kyrre

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Norseman

Nevertheless I think you've done a great job there!

Back in the water? Slight cold... might get in the water here at work in order to pick up parts from a life raft tested on the lake without attaching stuff with lanyard...
Going in the pool with Frid for the first time this evening. Hopefully we'll get our first underwater experience together. Whoohoo.

Sold the Discovery btw. Drove through Sweden to Oslo with it... Lots of nice roads, John

Kyrre

!!! sold the Disco !!!

Decided against putting the extra seats in then Kyrre?

Frid in the pool. Get em in early.

Adrian

[John Gulliver]

I triggered one of the many speed cameras near Fredrikstad when driving home from Gardemoen, doing about 80 in a 60 km zone. 60 km/h limit on one of Europe's main highways . Haven't got a fine yet, though. Maybe the Norwegian police are nice to people in Swedish-registered cars, or perhaps they are just slow.

[Norseman]

Originally Posted by John Gulliver

I triggered one of the many speed cameras near Fredrikstad when driving home from Gardemoen, doing about 80 in a 60 km zone. 60 km/h limit on one of Europe's main highways . Haven't got a fine yet, though. Maybe the Norwegian police are nice to people in Swedish-registered cars, or perhaps they are just slow.

Slow.. just slow. Getting caught doing 80 in a 60 zone I think you're looking at something in the 2500,- range.

The worst part of my 20 hour drive was the last bit from the border into Oslo. 60 and 70 km/h zones all over
While in sweden I followed a policecar for a while, doing 15 more than the limit. He pulled over so I could get past him

Yup, Adrian, sold it cuz the fekkin clutch was about to go. I was looking at a 10-15K repair job so when the oportunity came I jumped at it. Now what to get instead.... Subaru Forester or Honda CR-V i guess. But that's another discussion not very much related to Vancouver I guess.

K